Simonsons ambitious plot casts a wide netfrom treating themes of racism and religious intolerance to thwarted love and good old-fashioned greedbut she pulls it off with a sure hand. Publishers Weekly

Despite the taxpayer revolt, the Latouche Regional Library in the Columbia River Gorge is flourishing under Meg McLeans leadership, until someone kills a librarian and the bookmobile comes under attack.

The 2008 election is over, and Meg McLean has finally passed a library levy. In spite of an economy in free-fall, Megs personal and professional lives are thrivingalthough her lover, Undersheriff Rob Neill, keeps proposing marriage. Chief Madeline Thomas of the Klalos offers an inherited farmhouse for a branch librarybut the farm was owned by a relative of Megs rival and sworn enemy, library administrator Marybeth Jackman, who plans to contest the will. Disasters begin to strike: the farmhouse is vandalized, the chiefs home is firebombed, and Jackman falls to her death. In an echo of her malice, the countys bookmobile is violently attacked by pro-censorship protestors. Meg and Rob must deal with religious zealotry, bullying, and troubled motherdaughter relationships to penetrate the morass of bad karma and a maze of crimes.

Author Simonson says, The taxpayer revolt cost Hood River, Oregon, its 100-year-old library for a time, and that shocked me into writing Beyond Confusion, my tribute to public libraries. She adds that the Ashland OR library was also closed at that time.

Sheila Simonson, a native of the Pacific Northwest, is the author of twelve novels, eight of them mysteries. She is a retired English and history college teacher, and she lives in Vancouver, Washington.Visit Sheila Simonson's website